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We make Timothy hay, as well as some Teff grass hay - all of it to be sold to the horse market. One cut for the Timothy per year. If we could squeeze in a second cut, I might try it. We raise two different varieties of Timothy, Clair and Climax as they come in several weeks apart and we don't have to have all of our Timothy on the ground at the same time. The Teff will be cut about every 30 days - best we could do is 3 cuttings. Teff is our temporary hay while we reclaim an old field, replaced by Timothy seeding in the fall. Our soil is sandy/loamy, but filled with potato to basketball sized rocks! Water doesn't stand in our fields at all, but one very small field is in a flood plain and some of it can go under water. Hadn't really thought about gathering and selling chaff, we don't stack in a loft, I've got an elevator that needs a rebuild and is on the round-2-it list. We also have no livestock. Use to be cattle, a few hogs, chickens and a bunch of loud ginnys (sp?). When I was a boy, I had a 3 speed bicycle. There is a long lane, straight, going down into the farm with a tad down slope to it. Every once in a while, those ginnys would be assembled half way down that lane - in it. I would pedal that bicycle as fast as I could and run through/scatter those ginnys like a jet fighter! They really got loud when I'd do that - LOL! Acreage - this year, we're doing somewhere around 25-28 acres. We have the potential to do at least 50, probably more. Not sure where I want to top out. We cut 5 to 10 acres at a time. It's not often we have weather that allows for continuous cuttings, day in/out. Generally get a cut in the weather window and wait for another one a few days or weeks later. We stack on pallets - one thing I'm considering is asphalt flooring. From what I can glean, one can stack hay directly on asphalt with no mildew or mold as happens with concrete. This would eliminate pallets and make for an easy clean-up when the bales are gone. I have a day job. The goal is to whittle down our hay to as little time and labor as possible. We'd like a 9ft cut and rake, bale onto wagons and park them for unload in a shelter for another day. Our long pole in the tent has been unloading wagons as we bale. If we can postpone that for another day, we could bale much more hay. Our goal is to have enough wagons and drive-in shelter space to do 1,000 bales in a day if pressed. Recently I have been thinking (a few years from now) of refitting our wagons with rower racks and adding a pan kicker to the JD348. This would enable one person to make hay, again, parking the wagons in shelters for unloading another day. Bill
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